


Sharing Space

by pirategirljack



Category: 12 Monkeys (TV)
Genre: Awkward reunions, F/M, is angsty-fluff a thing?, there's only one bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-29
Updated: 2016-04-29
Packaged: 2018-06-05 05:02:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6690772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pirategirljack/pseuds/pirategirljack
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cole goes back to his room and finds that someone else has taken over in his absence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Cole was exhausted and headed to his bunk where it had always been without even thinking about it, shucking off his jacket and his shirt as he went--

\--and ran into the door when it opened right into his face.

"Shit," he said, half out of his shirt, trying to either get it off or on so he could get his hand to his nose, and not really succeeding in either. "What the hell, man--"

He finally got his clothes sort of back where they went and saw that it was Cassie. Cassie, with her blonde hair a little tangled and pulled roughly back, her skin clear and a little weather-chapped, dressed all in black with a gun still at her hip and her eyes wide. 

"What're you doing?" She asked, and he couldn't tell if her tone was surprised or mad. Maybe both.

"Going to bed. What're you doing in my room?"

"Your room? You've been gone for almost a year."

"Yeah, my--" He looked past her, saw her clothes on the floor, a new chair by the dresser that looked like it'd been scavenged from some house somewhere, a lamp he recognized from Jones's rooms. A new mirror, set lower on the wall. "You moved into my room?"

She looked like she wanted to argue, but instead, she flattened her lips and closed up her expression. "You weren't using it."

"Did you know it was mine?"

Her silence, the way she didn't look him in the face, said she did. Before he could process what that might mean, she stepped back out of the doorway, not exactly letting him in, but also not barring his way. "I didn't do anything to your stuff."

He didn't care about his stuff. Most of it was shit, anyway, leftovers and handmedowns, almost nothing he really cared about. He cared about the thought of her, lost and alone, choosing his room out of all the bunks in the facility. Sleeping in his bed. On his pillow.

"It's all in the closet."

"I don't--"

"Deacon and I are headed out on a run. Sleep. No one else is using the bed."

"Cass--" He caught her arm as she bushed past him, carefully kept his grip light. Not a threat. She tensed up anyway, but he didn't do anything to make it worse, and she slowly, slowly realaxed, just a little. She didn't pull away. It was the first time he'd touched her since she appeared before him with a gun in her hand, and he swore something tingled up his arm from where his hand rested on her skin.

He forgot whatever he was going to say.

The silence stretched between them, and he couldn't think of anything but the actual, physical fact that she was alive, that she was functional. Every night since he laid her on that table and sent her into the future, he'd worried he'd done the wrong thing. He worried he'd killed her when he could have saved her the same way he'd saved Ramse. He worried that she'd survived only to catch one of the mutations and die anyway, or totally fail to thrive and waste away, or get killed by some nobody scav the second she stepped outside. He'd imagined a hundred ways she could have died--and he hadn't dared to hope that she'd survive, and be good at it.

But she had. She has changed, and she was hard, but she was still Cassie. She'd helped him be better; he owed her the same attention.

Cole slipped his hand down her forearm toward her hand, and almost made it before she pulled away and found something to fuss with, to occupy her hands. "I have to go. Get some rest."

There wasn't much kindness in the words, but she'd said them. He nodded. She strode down the hall and Deacon met her at the intersection with two or three others, already ready to go. He glanced back once in Cole's direction, a measuring look on his face, and Cole wanted to punch him, but all he did was raise an eyebrow and then go back into his room. Cassie's room.

Their room?

The bed was made. He'd never once made his bed. The pillow was his, but it smelled like her hair, too. He'd never slept so soundly in his life.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassie comes back to her room this time, and remembers that someone's there.

Cassie came back to her room late, dirty, exhausted, wanting nothing more than to fall into her bed and sleep--and remembered Cole was there only when she saw that he was. It had been a bad run, they’d lost two of their Boys and only gotten half of what they’d gone out for, and she just wanted to sink into oblivion and never wake up again.

But Cole was in her bed.

He still had his clothes on, and was sleeping mostly on his stomach with one arm hanging off the side and his face mashed into the pillow, and it made her want to cry as much as that picture had. She’d spent months alternating between desperately wanting to see him again and trying not to think of him at all before settling on being vaguely mad at him. But now that he was here--and especially now that he was asleep in her bed--it was really hard to convince herself that the anger was justified. 

He was just Cole, doing his best and messing it up most of the time.

God, she was tired.

She thought about going to get a cot from the infirmary, but that seemed a million miles away and she’d already kicked off her boots. She thought about sleeping on the floor, but it was hard cement and she already hurt all over. She thought about just pushing him off the side and letting *him* sleep on the floor, but he looked as exhausted as she felt, and he was nothing but heavy dead weight she didn’t want to mess with right now.

And he looked peaceful, something she had rarely, if ever, seen before. She had redefined herself as a hard-edged bitch, ready to do whatever it took to stay alive, but...but she also knew that she was still herself, and Cole reminded her of that fact. It made it hard, when he was around, to justify what she’d done these past eight months. It was hard looking at him, remembering how he looked at her, seeing how he looked at her now, remembering how she’d looked at him…

This was stupid, standing here staring at a sleeping man when she could be sleeping herself. Dawn wasn’t far away.

Fuck it. They’d slept in a bed together before. They could do it again.

Cole was mostly on one side of the bed, so she took the other, not quite touching him, but not quite staying as far away as she could. He was warm, and that was new; everything here was always just a few degrees too cold. She’d gotten used to it, she’d had to, but it was so nice having something warm enough so close by…

\---  
Cassie woke with a start, disoriented, an unfamiliar pressure across her waist and a presence at her back, and reacted harshly. She was out of bed, his wrist in her hands, his arm seconds away from breaking before she realized the voice yelling at her to let go and the face contorted in pain was Cole’s.

She released him and scrambled back from the bed, her heart beating too fast, and she didn’t think it was because of the confrontation. She had the sneaking suspicion that it was because of the closeness, the warmth, the way she’d been more deeply asleep than she’d been since she woke up after her surgery when she first arrived.

It was terrifying. 

“Cass, it’s okay. It’s just me, okay?” He had his twisted arm--the arm she’d twisted--pulled in close to his chest, but he had his other hand up in a calming gesture, his eyes wide, his face earnest like how he’d looked when he was getting the vial from Jennifer.

And suddenly her fear burned off and was replaced by anger. A weird nebulous anger that didn’t have a clear cause, but that she directed at him.

“Get out of my bed,” she said. “Now.”

And he did. Without dropping that calming but defensive manner, and she wanted to scream at him. Scream that she wasn’t Jennifer. That she wasn’t herself. That he was right, it was his fault. She bit her tongue and glared at him until he left the room, because if she said any of that, she’d burst into tears and she wanted that even less.

When he was gone, rubbing his face and muttering “shit” under his breath, she finally relaxed, and then pulled her knees up to her chest, folded her arms on top of them, and hid her face until she could get her heartbeat under control. 

His shoes and coat were still here, and she almost threw them into the closet with the rest of his stuff...but her hands wouldn’t do it. It was hard, him being here, harder than it had been without him.

But it was also good, and nothing had felt good in months.

She put his coat over the back of her chair, his boots by the corner where he could reach them if he sat there. Made the bed.

And then re-made it, with the two flat, dingy pillows side by side, so it looked like a bed for two, despite its narrowness. She left before she could think that through too much, and went to find some food. She understood perfectly why Cole had always been so ready to eat everything in the house when he'd come to visit her.

When she saw Cole again, in the briefing room, he had his coat and shoes on, and he met her eyes for just a moment. She nodded, the smallest nod she could make, and she wasn’t quite sure why she’d done it and what it meant, exactly, but his eyebrows lifted just a fraction, the tension in his jaw relaxed just a bit, and he nodded back, just as almost-imperceptibly. They stood side-by-side for their briefing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I did continue it? I think there's one more to come after this.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I was gonna do this tomorrow, but whatevs. Here's the end!

After that, it was easier. 

They weren’t on the same schedule for a few days, but Cassie kept room for Cole and Cole kept room for Cassie, and they slept when they could. They still argued over the mission, but it didn’t feel so much like an insurmountable barrier. Deacon only teased them a little, and Jones glanced at Eklund and changed the subject every time he did.

A few days after she’d almost broken his arm, Cassie stood at the sink next to Cole’s to brush her teeth and asked if his wrist was alright.

“Yeah, fine.” He rotated his hand to prove it. “Serum fixed it up in no time.”

“Good.”

“It’s--” He looked like he was going to say something important, then changed his mind. “It’s good to have it again. Makes me stronger. It was weird, those months in 2016, having to worry about healing.”

She almost smiled. “I bet.”

\--  
Then, there was a night when they came back to the room together, joining each other at the door from opposite ends of the hall. Both of them had fresh bruises and raw knuckles, and their eyes met across the distance between them. 

Cole had barely crossed the threshold beside her when Cassie grabbed him by the coat and slammed him back into the wall, somehow kicking the door closed at the same time. His arms were around her waist before his brain caught up to the fact that she was kissing him, desperately, her arms already locked around his neck and her hands tangled in his hair.

He was already kissing her back.

They kissed for a long time, before she finally pulled back and he tightened his arms around her, afraid she’d pull all the way back and kick him out or run away, but she only went far enough to look him in the face. He tried a smile, and it felt lopsided, but it was real. “Wow,” he said. “That was...something.”

“I missed you.”

“I missed you, too. I was afraid I’d killed you.”

“I was afraid you had, too.” Cassie’s eyes were so deep, so sad. She ran her hands over his face and through his hair the way he had before he let her go to send her to the future, the way he had when she was dead in his arms. Both of those felt like a hundred years ago, and he’d been running on the idea that this time, he’d lost her for good and she was alive and beside him, but gone. Inside, gone, where it mattered. And he’d done that to her. Made her into what he’d never wanted her to be: a scav.

“What changed?” he said.

“You.” Then she frowned, shook her head. “Or, not you, you were a perfect gentleman and ideal support system all this time. But you helped me remember who I am--who I want to be. Despite all this.”

He lifted one eyebrow. “You wanted to be the one who slams someone up against a wall out of the blue?”

Old Cassie might have looked shy about that. New Cassie smiled wickedly. He thought he could handle some of New Cassie sticking around. 

“Not everything I learned here was bad. It’s useful to get to the point.”

“Isn’t it just.” Cole kissed her, this time, dragging her closer still, until their legs got in the way of each other and he had to pick her up and take her to the bed to save them the trouble. “God, it’s good to see you again,” he said when he was hovering over her, her hair loose all around her head and his hands buried in it. 

“We took too long getting to this reunion.”

“We did,” he said. “I should’ve disarmed you the second I saw you on that rooftop and kissed you then and there.”

“Excuse me?” she said, both eyebrows up and her eyes all wide and disbelieving in what he hoped was an exaggeration of skepticism. “There’s no way you could have disarmed me.”

“You sure about that?” And he kissed her neck and got her shirt open in one go.

“Touche,” she said--and then she did something tricky and the next thing he knew, he was on his back with her pinning him to the bed. “Try again,” she said.

“You’re amazing,” he said, and slid his hands up to cup her face and push her hair out of the way. He sat up to kiss her again, and then they didn’t need to fight or talk or prove anything; all they needed were each other.

\---  
A long time later, Cassie lay with her ear on Cole’s chest, listening to his heartbeat while he absently combed his fingers through her hair and down her back. She’d wanted to do this before, when he was dying and she was afraid his heart would just stop when she wasn’t looking, but she couldn’t remember now why she hadn’t. Maybe it was because of Aaron. Maybe it was because she’d been so afraid, she hadn’t had space to be brave about anything other than finding him help. Maybe she’d needed eight months of trying to process what had happened to even know that that’s what she’d wanted anyway.

Cole was almost asleep. She felt like she’d never need to sleep again. Whatever else was out there, waiting to kill her, here, she was safe.

“Love you,” Cole said, his eyes closed. “Should’ve said so before. Didn’t know what it was till Ramse put a word to it, then you were gone.”

And that’s when Cassie finally cried about everything that had happened. Cole pulled her close, pulled the thin, itchy blanket up over both of them, and held her until the tears ran out.

**Author's Note:**

> Maybe I'll continue this? I don't know, the muse is just waking up, since we're two eps in now.


End file.
